Paperwork question

oysterman

Morning people. Recently i transferred a pension to another provider. Can i shred the old paperwork now or wait for a period of time. Cheers 👍

AlanP_2

I would at least wait until you are 100% convinced it has all moved across OK.

Also why not scan them before shredding and save somewhere just in case there is a query of some kind further down the line?

jamesd

Whatever you do with the physical things, keep scanned or photographed versions for a long, long time.

squirrelpie

I'm normally the type that keeps all paperwork for ever (bank statements and payslips back to the seventies etc) but I was interested by this question and am surprised by the answers. Are there any time limits on future problems/opportunities or does 'a long, long time' mean 'for ever'? I'm curious what kind of things can happen.

jamesd

Very few or no things need to be kept once you're dead and your estate distributed and not contested by anyone.

After death there can be a potential need to learn about gifts to determine if there's an inheritance tax bill due on them. Purchase prices of shares or unit trusts can be needed to work out their CGT bill and those could have been purchased many decades earlier.

Before death, there have been a fair number of cases showing up here where people were asked for ancient pay records to proved that they had paid NI and ere entitled to a year of state pension or even private pension credit. HMRC and DWP seem to keep records for at least as long as the individual is alive and HMRC at least will provide theirs on request.